Nine’s use of repeats of The Big Bang Theory last night reminded me of the network’s flogging of repeats of repeats of Two And A Half Men a few years ago when Eddie McGuire and other management heads had no new programming ideas. Perhaps that’s being unfair to Eddie because the same group of programmers are still at Nine, with Dave Gyngell leading the way this time.

House Rules was allowed to dominate, and it did with 2.441 million national/ 1.518 million metro/ 923,000 regional viewers). Nine is running dead because it realises it doesn’t have any new programming strong enough to go up against House Rules, which is closing on its finale. Next Wednesday is the third and final State of Origin rugby league game, which Nine will use to try and win the week.

At 6pm Nine News won Sydney by 20,000 (much closer than recently, school holidays?) and 102,000 in Melbourne, while Seven News won Brisbane by 30,000 and had big wins in Adelaide and Perth. In the morning Seven’s Sunrise had 351,000 metro viewers. Today had 274,000, which is still not good enough.

Network channel share:

Seven (36.6%)

Nine (24.4%)

Ten (19.7%)

ABC (15.8%)

SBS (3.5%)

Network main channels:

Seven (24.4%)

Nine (17.8%)

Ten (13.6%)

ABC1 (11.1%)

SBS ONE (2.9%)

Top digital channels:

7TWO (7.9%)

7mate (4.3%)

Eleven (3.9%)

GO, Gem (3.3%)

ABC2 (3.0%)

Top 10 national programs:

House Rules (Seven) – 2.441 million

Nine News 6.30 — 1.625 million

Seven News — 1.602 million

Home and Away (Seven) – 1.405 million

MasterChef Australia (Ten) — 1.207 million

ABC News — 1.141 million

A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.127 million

The Big Bang Theory (Nine) — 1.112 million

Nine News 6.30 –– 1.102 million

Seven News/ Today Tonight — 1.071 million

Top metro programs:

House Rules (Seven) – 2.2 million

Seven News — 1.202 million

Nine News 6.30 — 1.103 million

Nine News — 1.012 million

Seven News/ Today Tonight — 1.071 million

Losers: Viewers of Nine. A weak offering from a network not interested in competing.Metro news and current affairs: